Summary of Genesis 2:4-25:
After God made the heavens and the earth but before plants had sprung and only streams had watered the earth, God made man from the dust of the ground and breathed life into his nostrils and man became living. He put the man in the garden of Eden. He made all kinds of trees for food and in the middle were the tree of life and the tree of knowledge of good and evil. A river watered this garden.
God put man in charge of the garden to work it and take care of it. He warned the man not to eat from the tree of knowledge or he would die. He brought the animals to Adam to name. When God did so, He noticed no helper was found for man; so He created woman from Adam’s rib while he was sleeping so man would not be alone.
This is why man will leave his father and mother and be united with his wife and become one flesh. They were naked and felt no shame.
BSF Study Questions Genesis: Lesson 2, Day 4: Genesis 2:4-25
10) Personal Question. My answer: Man felt no shame; this is a consequence of sin. After all, what was to be ashamed about if you didn’t sin? God gave Adam a companion because it was for Adam’s good. God gives us companions and other things because it is for our good.
11) God put man in charge of the garden to work it and take care of it. He commanded the man not to eat from the tree of knowledge or he would die. He brought the animals to Adam to name. Man’s purpose is to care for the garden and everything in it, including the animals. He commanded man not to eat the fruit from the tree of knowledge because he would die. This was for man’s own good.
12) This is a loaded question, and the answers can be anything. Mine: You can know God’s care for us as He has given us everything we need to survive. You can see God’s attention to detail, and how He has given everything a purpose and a place. You can see and feel God’s love for us in His creation. You can see His goodness, His desire for us to have everything we need, and His purpose for our lives. You can see His supremacy, and you can see why He deserves nothing less than our complete devotion. In essence, you see God when you truly see nature.
Conclusions BSF Study Questions Genesis: Lesson 2, Day 4: Genesis 2:4-25
I love how what we think to be human emotions, such as shame, fear, and anxiety, were never God’s intention for us. He did not give those to us; we gave those to ourselves when sin entered the picture. God never meant for us to be afraid of anything, to want for anything, and to fear Him. He meant for us to always be with Him as we will be in heaven. God and everything He has made are good.
End Notes BSF Study Questions Genesis: Lesson 2, Day 4: Genesis 2:4-25
And so ends the genealogy of the heavens and the earth, a history given directly by God to either Moses or Adam, recording the history of God’s 7 day creation that no human was present to witness.
FUN FACT: This is the first use of LORD (Yahweh) in the Bible. Our English word Lord comes from the Anglo-Saxon word for bread (as does our word loaf) because ancient English men of high stature would keep a continual open house, where all could come and get bread to eat. They gained the honorable title of lords, meaning “dispensers of bread.”
Man had not yet been created to care for the vegetation of the earth, and there was no rain. The thick blanket of water vapor in the outer atmosphere created on the second day of creation (Genesis 1:6-8) made for no rain. However, a system of evaporation and condensation formed heavy dew or ground-fog.
When God created man, He made him out of the most basic elements, the dust of the ground.
- When the Bible uses dust in a figurative or symbolic sense, it means something of little worth, associated with lowliness and humility (Genesis 18:27; 1 Samuel 2:8; 1 Kings 16:2).
- With this Divine breath, man became a living being, like other forms of animal life (the term chay nephesh is used in Genesis 1:20-21 and here). Yet only man is a living being made in the image of God (Genesis 1:26-27).
The word for breath in Hebrew is ruach is the same word for Spirit, as is the case in both ancient Greek (pneuma) and Latin (spiritus). God created man by putting His breath, His Spirit, within him.
The King James Version reads: man became a living soul. So is man a soul, or does man have a soul? This passage seems to indicate that man is a soul, while passages like 1 Thessalonians 5:23 and Hebrews 4:12 seem to indicate that man has a soul. It seems that the Scripture speaks in both ways.
The Garden of Eden
Eden was a garden specifically planted by God; it was a place God made to be a perfect habitation for Adam (and later, Eve).
Genesis chapter 2 is the history of creation from Adam’s perspective, which does not contradict the account of Genesis 1:1-2:7 .
- In Matthew 19:4-5, Jesus referred to events in Genesis 1 and to events in Genesis 2 as one harmonious account.
- The tree of life was to grant (or to sustain) eternal life (Genesis 3:22). God still has a tree of life available to the His people (Revelation 2:7), which is in heaven (Revelation 22:2).
- The whole feel of this account gives the sense that it was written by an actual eyewitness of the rivers and surroundings. Adam probably wrote this himself.
These rivers used to exist. However, the names of these rivers can’t be used to determine where the Garden of Eden was located because the flood dramatically changed the earth’s landscape and reconfigured these rivers.
God put Adam into the most spectacular paradise the world has seen, but God put Adam there to do work. Work is something good for man and was part of Adam’s perfect existence and our purpose before the fall.
If there is never a command or never something forbidden there can then never be choice. God wants our love and obedience to Him to be the love and obedience of choice.
The Creation of Eve
For the first time, God saw something that was not good – the aloneness of man.
- God gives man the responsibility (and the accountability) to be the leader in the home and gives women the responsibility and the accountability to help him.
- We only see “helping” as a position of inferiority when we think like the world thinks. God considers positions of service as most important in His sight (Matthew 20:25-28).
COOL FACT: Here, Adam’s intellect had not yet suffered from the fall, so he was probably the most brilliant man who ever lived.
ANOTHER COOL FACT: This is the first surgery recorded in history. God even used a proper anesthetic on Adam.
God used Adam’s own body to create Eve to forever remind him of their essential oneness. Man and woman are more alike than they are different.
We also know the Bride of Christ comes from the wound made in the side of the second Adam, Jesus Christ.
“She was taken from under his arm that he might protect her and from next to his heart that he might love her” (Barnhouse).
Note that the subordinate relationship of wives to husbands is found before the curse, not only after it.
Man and Wife Are One Flesh
A man and wife can truly come together in a one-flesh relationship, yet they must be joined. It is a spiritual fact, but the benefits of that oneness are not gained by accident or by chance.
This passage forms the foundation for the Bible’s understanding of marriage and family. Both Jesus (Matthew 19: 5) and Paul (Ephesians 5:31) quoted it in reference to marriage.
- Husband and wife become one flesh under God’s blessing. In extramarital sex, the partners become “one flesh” under God’s curse.
- The fullness of what God wants to do in the one flesh relationship takes time. It has to become.
- Adam understood the essential oneness in his relationship with Eve. This point is so important that it is referred to several times in the New Testament, including the great marriage passage in Ephesians 5:28-29
Being naked shows being open and exposed as a person before God and man. To be naked… and not ashamed means you have no sin, nothing to be rightly ashamed of, and nothing to hide.
Credit to enduring word for commentary